Speculation and excitement have swirled around the former Boeing C-17 production facility on Lakewood Ave since September of last year, when the newly-formed Long Beach Studios announced plans to purchase the building and transform it into the most perfect film studio in all the world. When the deal fell out of escrow last month due to investing problems caused by the economic crisis, Long Beach Studios maintained that it was only a temporary setback.
But an article posted last night at thedistrictweekly.com, by Theo Douglas, reports that there may be several potential suitors for the available facility. Citing unnamed sources, Douglas floats around the idea that electric carmaker Tesla Motors is a front-runner, or at least has interest in the site. Well, if you paid any attention to our Grand Prix coverage last weekend, you know that we at the lbpost.com are certified car nuts, so we did a little digging into the possible scenarios and sources of the rumors.
One of those sources may have been the lbpost.com. Our own Nancy Pfeffer wrote that Tesla was interested in coming to Long Beach after speaking with Mayor Bob Foster and his chief aide at the revealing of a new Tesla model earlier this month. In that post, she wrote:
I was delighted to run into Long Beach Mayor Foster and his chief of staff, Becki Ames. Apparently Tesla is considering using a former Boeing site in Long Beach as a potential factory for the Model S! This would be a great catch for our city, creating a number of real “green-collar” jobs, and I’m very glad the Mayor was there.
The city is certainly hungry to fill that empty facility with business of some kind, and Douglas even suggests that Tesla may purchase it and lease to Long Beach Studios while it prepares the site for auto assembly capabilities. He also says that production is slated to begin in 2011 – coincidentally, the same year that Tesla has suggested their electric four-door sedan Model S will be slated for first production. And the Mayor has made it a point to reach out to green businesses, a mission that fits an electric carmaker like a racing harness. But is this the right time for Long Beach to get involved with the young, sexy, troubled auto company?
The car industry is famously shaky at the moment, and electric carmakers are no exception to that rule. Tesla has battled one financial hardship after another, having gone through massive layoffs and the closing of their Detroit assembling facility in the past year. Not to mention the situation in San Jose, where Tesla announced plans to build a production factory last summer only to back out of the deal.
And then there’s the black (or should I say green?) cloud hanging over their heads. Tesla could be in line for more than $350 million in loans from the Department of Energy that are earmarked for green production projects. The upstart automaker qualifies and has applied for the loans, but the big American carmakers have too, looking to jumpstart electric programs of their own. A recent Washington Post article calls Tesla’s future “uncertain” if they are unable to secure that funding. It would also be interesting to see how a company that recently admitted to having $9 million in the bank plans to purchase property worth many times that.
The automaker set the industry on fire when the exotic Tesla Roadster hit the streets with curvaceous looks and supercar statistics, all on a futuristic drivetrain and electric battery with zero emissions. No one will deny that Tesla has delivered on its seemingly-impossible promise to create a revolutionary sportscar, and there is no reason to believe that the same success can not be achieved with their introductory sedan. Better still, rumors hint that Tesla is planning to base a future crossover vehicle on the four-door Model S platform, opening the possibility that said car would be produced in the same facility. And to have those vehicles produced in Long Beach could be a huge potential boost for employment as well as visibility to other potential businesses.
But this potential deal, if true in the first place, is one that should be examined very carefully before approval due to the state of the auto industry and the financial state of Tesla Motors itself.
By Ryan ZumMallen, Managing Editor